Passing Sundaes
by scout27
Summary: TV BASED! "She wasn't sure why she had said what she did to her mother that afternoon. She'd panicked." Spoilers up to and through ep. 1x12. A little Serena/Lily drabble and character back story. I love both of these characters and I couldn't help myself


**Passing Sundaes**

She wasn't sure why she had said what she did to her mother that afternoon. She'd panicked. As soon as she saw the name on the caller ID and watched her mother hastily throwing clothes into an open suitcase; her insides had filled with that heavy feeling of dread you only get when you realize that something terrible could be about to happen. She wasn't sure why the words had spilled out of her mouth and why she was unable to stop them. It wasn't like her. It wasn't how she was brought up. She was trained and bred to always say the right thing at the absolute right time, to control her emotions and keep an even keel no matter the circumstances, to offer a smile even to her most bitter enemy when she was in public. In her world, you _always_ judged a book by its cover or the size of its diamonds. But sometimes her mom just brought out the worst in her. And sometimes the worst in her just needed some time out to play.

She wasn't sure why she _always_ left conversations like this with her mother feeling guilty. Why was _she_, of all people, feeling guilty? She hadn't done anything wrong. She didn't have to justify her actions because she had asked her mom to think about her daughter over herself this one time in particular. She had a right to plead this case after all of the times her mother had screwed up she and Eric's lives with nothing more than a curt, sugar coated explanation over an ice cream sundae with two cherries and extra hot fudge at Serendipity.

* * *

First there was James, the soap opera actor, Sherridan and his two huge St. Bernard's, Teddy and Bear...seriously. Serena was 7 and Eric was 5 and it was Lily's first marriage after their father had mysteriously left to run his family's shipping empire from the other side of the country in California for no apparent reason and with no goodbyes. Their mother had moved them out of the 5th Avenue brownstone penthouse that they had grown up in until that point and in to her new husband's starkly decorated, ALL white, Park Avenue apartment. The dogs each had their own rooms and Eric and Serena had to share. It wasn't that the apartment was small, it was that their new step-father had an office, an acting room, an art studio, a theater room (so he could watch a life sized version of himself on the recorded episodes of his soap that he taped every day), a gym, and a personal grooming room (She'd assumed calling it that was simply his annoying way of attempting to hide the fact that he had a personal salon in his apartment). 

Originally Jimmy (he insisted that they call him that) had tried to be their pal, taking them to the park with his dogs on Sunday afternoons while their mother had her massages and buying them an ice cream cone on the way back. It became their routine for about 6 months and it wasn't terrible considering the fact that this was the only time they saw him and that they spent the majority of the rest of their time at school or with their nanny, Mrs. G. Then, one evening, Eric had spilled grape soda on one of his pristine white couches and Jimmy suddenly went back to James and she and Eric were permanently in the doghouse, no pun intended. When Serena was 8 she had the main part in her class's Christmas Pageant, she lost 5 baby teeth, she broke her arm on the playground at recess when Blair had pushed her off of the monkey bars; and her mother was there for all of it. The marriage lasted exactly 1 year and 3 months and Serena couldn't have been more thrilled for it's demise if someone had given her a pony with a purple bow tied around it's belly to deliver the news. It was inevitable and for the best; Lily had hated the dogs and Serena and Eric had hated their master.

On Serena's ninth birthday, after two months of courtship and another way too big sundae in attempt to ease the blow, Lily van der Woodsen married her third husband; an old money jet-setter and way to old to be a playboy, Playboy Timothy Hale the Third. Serena hated him immediately. Your mother getting married on your birthday tends to do that to a girl. Eric, ever the peacemaker, didn't actually begin to dislike him until he realized that Playboy the Third was monopolizing what little time they would have had with their mother, leaving them with nothing. The new couple was rarely home, as Playboy was constantly whisking Lily off to even more exclusive parties, charity events, and shows then she had ever had access to before. This left Serena and Eric to spend all of their evenings and weekends under the not so watchful eye of their getting older by the minute nanny; whom they both adored but couldn't take the place of their mother. They spent the majority of their time reading in the overly large, and rarely used library, watching television, torturing Playboy's grouchy old cat, Frick, with Blair...and going through their stepfather's monstrous East 82nd Street mansion which never felt like their home even though they did have ornate bedrooms to call their own.

They spent two years with Playboy and Frick in the mansion.

When Serena was 11 she started her period, had her first french kiss with Anthony Avuldson, she was chosen to represent her school in a public speaking competition, and she bought her first pair of Chanel earrings for her newly pierced ears; none of which her mother was around for. On New Years Eve that year Lily came home and interrupted their annual viewing of _Ferris Bueller's Day Off_ with Nate, Blair, Anthony and a smuggled bottle of expensive Kentucky Bourbon that the boys had carefully lifted from Playboy's overstocked liquor cabinet. Ever the hostess, even while visibly upset, Lily had asked to speak to Serena and Eric alone after exchanging pleasant greetings, fake smiles, and a kind dismissal to their friends. Lily instructed Serena and Eric to pack what they needed to live for several days before the rest of their belongings could be retrieved and brought back to their old 5th Avenue penthouse, which now seemed to serve as little more than intermediate housing between marriages. Serena was never certain about what happened with Playboy, but she and Eric often speculated that that either he, or their mother, had been caught doing something they weren't supposed to be doing with someone they weren't supposed to be doing it with.

The week before Christmas when Serena was thirteen and Eric was eleven, their mother surprised them with plane tickets to St. John in the Virgin Islands where they would be meeting her new "friend." Instead of a sundae, this time there was a beach house on a cliff overlooking the Turquoise waters of the Caribbean where Serena and Eric met Edward Foster, an entrepreneur who was old enough to be their grandfather but ended up being step-dad number three. They should have known when their mother insisted upon Crème Brulè for desert on the first night of the trip that a wedding would be soon to follow. So soon in fact, that Lily became Mrs. Edward Foster before the trip was even over in a beach side ceremony at sunset that consisted of the four of them and a native island minister. As soon as they returned from that trip, Edward Foster moved from his townhouse on East 86th Street to 5th Avenue, to_ their_ home. There was immediately something different this time, something Serena was unprepared for. She actually _liked_ Edward. She liked him a lot. He made her feel welcome, and he didn't try to force her to act like his "daughter." He left her alone and he treated she and Eric with respect. He smelled like the sweet, fresh scent of pipe smoke and he always wore a smile on his wrinkled face which bore a neat and well groomed, handsome old man appearance. And he made their mother happy, happier than she seemed to have been since their father left.

Serena spent the next summer at Edward's beach house on St. John while Eric was away at soccer camp. A summer that she only vaguely remembered as it was also the summer that she discovered her penchant for drinking a little _too_ much before she even realized she'd had a little. Blair spent that summer with her on St. John, two entire months of hot days and breezy nights in the open house that looked over the beautiful ocean that seemed to go on forever. Lily came to visit several times, but never stayed any longer than it took to make sure Serena was staying out of any significant trouble that the help couldn't control and to make a quick stop at the Cartier and Tiffany boutiques on St. Thomas.

That summer, the summer of her fourteenth year, Serena got high for the first time, she learned how to sail and how to fish in the shallow coral beds off of the beach, she got sunburned so badly she blistered and Blair had to rub aloe on her shoulders for two weeks straight, she lost her virginity at a party she didn't remember to a tourist boy from Georgia named Tim whom she never spoke to again, and she and Eric's nanny Mrs. G retired before she returned home that autumn. Lily wasn't there for any of it, though she did pass on the news of Mrs. G leaving on her way out the door to a committee meeting on a muggy Saturday evening in August when both Serena and Eric came home from the airport.

When Serena was fourteen and Eric was twelve, Edward died in his sleep of a heart attack. Serena cried for the man she'd only known a little over a year, she cried because her mother cried, she cried because once again they were alone and the entire cycle would start at the beginning. She cried because she felt lost even though she knew exactly where she was. Two weeks later school started and Serena met her first real boyfriend, Justin Shoemaker, a junior and the captain of the varsity boys swimming team at St. Jude's. Three weeks later, Lily was gone so often, Serena had a hard time remembering when she'd seen her last. Four weeks later Serena found that drinking a lot and partying even more helped her to forget to worry about what would happen next. Six weeks later Eric realized that he would have to take care of his sister _and_ his mother and that is exactly what he did.

To this day, whenever she smelled the fresh scent of the sea salt air, Serena thought of Edward and his beach house on the cliff in St. John.

Seven months later Lily was introduced to Marcus Rothenstein, a stiff, slightly overweight, dot com billionaire, at a cocktail party to benefit the Whitney Museum. She hit it off with Marcus and his billions right away and after several failed attempts to get Eric and Serena together for a date at Serendipity, finally spilled the news of the upcoming nuptials over sundaes _and_ hot chocolate a week and a half later than she originally intended. She wasn't sure why it took her so long to realize this, but Serena finally found the key to making these dates more enjoyable and its name was Vodka. She had giggled stupidly, thanks to her buzz, as her mother told she and Eric about Marcus and his 7-year-old twins Jeffrey and Julian and their fantastic penthouse on Lexington. Eric sat silently stirring his ice cream into a soupy mess, Serena ate sloppily in between giggles, and Lily finally huffed and stormed out in annoyance.

The wedding took place an embarrassingly short two weeks later, and Serena arrived late and annoyed. She and Eric had met Marcus and his kids once before the wedding at a horribly aggravating dinner at an overly fancy Italian restaurant. He was rude and his kids were brats and Serena and Eric were miserable already. Two weeks after moving in, Serena had stumbled in very late one night, or early one morning, reeking of smoke and alcohol and unexpectedly ran into Marcus as he was leaving for work. He had told her to straighten up or not come back and she had told him to kindly go fuck himself. Two days later, she was stuck watching her step-brothers as a punishment while her mother and step-bastard where out at the Met and the Nanny had the night off. That night Julian threw up all over her brand new Hermes Birkin Bag at which point she had sat the brats in front of the TV and stormed out of the apartment without a second thought. She stayed with Blair for the next three weeks, and with Kati for two after that since Blair had gotten angry about Serena getting invited to some fashion week event that she was excluded from. She ignored message after pissed-off message from her mother, who was only aware of her whereabouts thanks to updates relayed through Eric.

The marriage lasted exactly 5 months and ended bitterly, but Serena didn't care one way or another. That winter she had spent almost every afternoon and some mornings with Nate or Chuck, or whomever else she could find who wasn't concerned about skipping school or was already out, (knowing the company wasn't really a prerequisite when you were completely trashed) getting drunk at the bar of The Palace or The Rose Bar at the Gramercy Park Hotel. It was hard to be concerned about fucking up when fucking up was all you were interested in doing. She was the life of the party where ever she went, she was the center of attention; and she could get whatever she wanted because everyone wanted her and it was the one thing in her life that felt good.

When Serena was fifteen she was elected co-head of Constance Billard's social committee with Blair, she discovered Blair had a serious eating disorder, she spent more of her time drunk than sober, she had sex with her best friend's boyfriend, and she ran away from everything because everything she touched broke. Her mother was only there for the latter, and Serena was certain that was mostly due to the fact that Lily was happy to see her go and Serena didn't blame her.

* * *

She loved her mom, regardless of her faults, and she knew that Lily loved _her_ regardless of _her_ faults. She wasn't trying to screw up her mom's life, but had she? 

No, no way. This was completely different. She wasn't trying to dull anyone's pain with a passing sundae and a kiss on the cheek.

Her mother left behind a trail of failed marriages that read like the rap sheet of a Chicago gangster, and every single one had hurt Serena and Eric more than the last. Some patterns never change, and even though she loved her mother dearly, picturing her breaking out of this pattern was like trying to picture New York City without buildings. If her mother was considering being with Rufus Humphrey again, not only would it ruin her chances of happiness with Dan, it would leave Dan and Jenny feeling the same way that she and Eric had felt so many times before and she cared way too much about all of them to think about watching that happen. She'd done the right thing, being honest with Lily this time.

She loved Dan and it had nothing to do with money or status. It had nothing to do with what he could give her, but how he made her feel like she was the most important thing in his life regardless of how many pairs of Jimmy Choo's she had in her closet or what her street address was. He loved her for her, and she loved him and how he made her a better person; and as far as she was concerned that made all the difference in the world. Maybe this wouldn't last forever, but she was going to do everything in her power to make sure that it lasted as long as it was meant to. She looked out the window of the cab as the familiar gray and brown buildings drifted by, and prepared to face this mistake and sacrifice herself to protect what they had, to protect him, if she needed to. She would show her mother how much this meant to her. She knew exactly who she was and exactly who she intended to be.

Serena van der Woodsen was definitely her mother's daughter, but she would never turn into her mother.


End file.
